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No hits on Netflix, Amazon Prime

Every year, in January, I look at the streaming market through the Box Office Lens (for reference, here’s data from 2011 and 2010). So it’s time to pick up the 2012 list of box office hits and take the same look.

2012: A subscription odyssey

This year saw the rise of a potential competitor to Netflix in Amazon Prime, as the retail giant started offering an all-you can-eat buffet of movie and TV shows (Amazon Prime should not be confused with Amazon VOD, which offers movies and TV show on a per title fee.) For each movie of the top 100 movies at the box office, I pulled data on for streaming info on Netflix and Amazon Prime. I also pulled up availability of DVDs to use as a yardstick in terms of overall movie availability:

At first look, the subscription based business doesn’t see to be where you want to go if you are looking for the latest hits. Of the top 100 movies at the box office in 2012, Netflix had 5 and Amazon Prime had 2. By comparison, 77 of those movies were available for rent on DVD (if you still have a corner rental place, that is).

Let’s grade on the curve and assume that 77 is the number of movies we can expect to see available as the other 23 are still in theater. That would mean that Netflix saw 6.5% availability while Amazon prime saw 2.6% availability.

The only thing we can assume, from there is that online subscription services are not the type of place you want to go to if you are looking to see movies that came out in the previous year. As the two services are looking to develop their catalog, it looks as if they decided that the first 12 months after release of a movie do not figure in their existing business plan and that consumers will go find such movies somewhere else.

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Where do they (that being consumers) go? They download pirated copied if course. Therefore it behooves the movie industry to enable streaming (enable from the economic perspective so that it is not cost prohibitive) so that Amazon, iTunes, et. al. can offer these hit movies to their customers. My guess is that the movie industry loses nothing by going hard into the streaming business.

Most? Probably where they’ve _always_ gone for movie rentals. Coincidentally, also to NF and AMZ (I have the Dark Knight DVD from NF in my living room right now) but rentals are such a huge profit center for the makers of this content. they’re not just going to roll over for a few thousand people who pirate copies. Many movies recoup th

You can stream Dark Knight this instant for a few bucks on AMZ. That is not a strong argument for it to be given away for an $8/mo subscription.

I don’t understand the point of this article. Netflix Streaming and Amazon Prime Video exist to replace cable. Are any of these movies available on cable? THAT’s the medium these services compete with.

If you want to bring up the local video store, Netflix Discs-By-Mail and/or Amazon-Just-Being-Amazon are the services you should be comparing. How many of these are available to rent on disc from Netflix? To buy on disc from Amazon? THOSE are the services competing with Blockbuster.

So again, I don’t understand what point you’re getting at. Are you saying that Netflix Streaming and Amazon Prime Video aren’t replacing the corner video store? Yeah, well they’re not replacing the corner laundromat either. Nor should anyone expect them to.

Glad someone mentioned this – it’s amazing the author seems to have been doing this for three years and doesn’t quite grasp these markets. There’s no logical way to compare a ‘streaming’ service like cable and these online companies to the movie industry’s ‘new release’ DVD list. The _better_ comparison would be for current-season television shows as that’s the main market competition. Compare programming you can watch right now on your TV set.

You want to compare new releases against Netflix? You really need to compare the DVD side or have a better description on _why_ media licenses are different between delivery mediums.

A little bit of history is needed on this, I assume. Netflix has long positioned its service as a replacement for the corner store: first through the rental of DVDs by mail and later through explaining it was transitioning that model to the web.

Yes, it is true that they have failed at transitioning the model and now seem closer to cable channels. IF we take that new positioning, then comparing them to cable will also fail as (just to take a random sample) movies like “The 3 stooges” or “American Reunion” are currently available on HBO (see http://www.hbo.com/#/movies ). So I guess they’re failing on that measure too.